We all know what problems there are with nuclear power; or we know some of it at least. What I don't like about it is that it isn't a long term solution; it is just an "easy" temporary fix, and as all temporary fixes it will be regarded as more or less permanent once it is up and running, stifling any motivation for getting down in the dirt to find the right solution. What makes it doubly pointless is that we already have better solutions within our grasp - at least two different ways of exploiting solar energy directly, several ways of exploiting water power, wind power. The only real problem is lack of political guts and stamina.
That is the problem with being as old as McBush - young people have visions and ideas for the future because they have one. And before you get started about age-ism - I'm old myself, I bloody know what I'm talking about, at least in this respect. Believe me, when you know that you probably don't have many decades left, you stop planning so far ahead, because what's the point?
The short version: Intellectuals are all subversives.
The longer version is that the most intelligent people are often not good at automatically following orders. They tend to reflect on what is said and question authority - when you have gone through university and possibly got a PhD, I think you can be excused for feeling that you are the best authority around at any time. This is not quite what the army is after, is my impression; they want people that can whip of a "Sir! Yes Sir!" so it feels like a slap in the face.
And the military doesn't have a reputation for intellectual brilliance - it is more a case of "if you can't be anything else, be a soldier".
All in all I think well-educated don't want the army, and the army don't want intellectuals either. Not an easy one to solve.
Becasue people want to walk into their homes and smell coffee already brewing? Except you always get caught up in traffic jams on the way home, so you come home to the smell of stale coffee instead.
So they can find out is anyone has made coffee recently? But why would anyone want to know that? In a private home you would already know in other ways, or it would be unimportant.
To automatically order beans after x amount of brews? Surely it isn't beyond the capability of the average consumer to inspect the inside of the coffee jar to see if it empty? I think we in the West, and Americans in particular are duped into believing that "automatic" = "good" because then we don't have to do anything but enjoy the result. But more than half of the joy is in making the coffee, baking the bread, building the campfire etc etc. I don't know if any of you guys do any gardening? I mean, I could pay a gardener to come and dig the flower beds and grow my veggies for me, so I can lean back and enjoy a sumptuous display of flowers and eat fresh vegetables from my garden. But there is some kind of magic in having suffered the back ache, having been dirty and sweaty and having been down on your knees to weed all summer and then seeing the glorious result. Well, that's what I think.
And isn't it true that we as hackers enjoy the dirty work of programming? Using a program you made yourself is so much nicer than using somebody else's.
I haven't been able to connect to the site for some reason... Still, when has evidence ever been required for when I voice my infallible opinion?
There is a reason why it is called 'pimping': it means that it is full of tasteless glitter with little to no functional benefit, which will in a few years look distinctly goofy. Just take a look at any episode of the first series of Star Trek - no doubt it was thought of as very impressive when it was filmed, but now it looks like what some pre-teen has banged up with his Lego set.
It seems profoundly dishonest, the way this article tries wring out an issue about "free speech" of this case. We all know that free speech isn't an unlimited right anywhere in the world, and that this is the way it should be. Any freedom will always be limited by the laws that protect all the other rights of people in society; it is a manifestation of serious immaturity and lack of insight to rail against the rule of law, when it is actually the rule of law that gives you the right to freedom that you have.
But back to the case - slandering people is not protected by freedom of speech, nor is it the right way to proceed. If you as a citizen have evidence about questionable activities, you have several legal avenues - if you know of a crime it is your duty to inform the police, so they can pursue the criminals. The only reason for slandering another person or company on a web-site is that one's evidence wasn't good enough to convince either the police, the court or any news-media; and in that case, perhaps you are simply wrong?
This is probably going to be simply ignored, as it is just one of my pet peeves; but as it is one of my pet peeves, I will proceed none the less. Consequently, this is my Message To The World:
What's the bloody sense in making a thing like this - let alone owning one? It is not exactly demanding, making you own coffee: put ground coffee beans in your favourite cafetiere/filter/mysterious glass thing with a spirit burner, add water, possibly hot. Wait for the magic to unfold right before your very eyes. Pour and drink. If you want to go all out, you grind your own coffee beans.
Recently I've seen more and more of these pointless gadgets where you insert a little foil capsule into a complicated piece of equipment and out comes a mediocre cup of coffee that has cost probably 10 times as much as a good cup of hand-made coffee; and you will have left a huge, reeking carbon footprint in the process. Plus, after a while you will have convinced yourself that you could never go back to doing it the old way - in other words, you have become dependent on a silly gadget, a little bit more helpless.
I suppose that is exactly where the industry wants us: unable to cook our own food, so we have to rely on ready made crap, unable to perform even the simplest of everyday tasks, because we rely on household machinery. Why do people fall for it? We honestly don't need most of these things unless we suffer from a physical disability; and they don't actually save us any meaningful time - by which I mean time we then spend on doing things that are worth doing rather than sit down to watch tv or play computer games.
"Given that Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does that mean it took the IAEA 1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?" No, it just means that it is now time to stir up people's fear of "international terrorism" so whichever government let this bit of news out can squeeze through yet another draconian security measure.
This is a civil case. That is what I don't quite understand - making illegal copies is a crime, right? At least according to the law. So why does the court allow it to be prosecuted under civil law? A crime is a crime, and it should be treated as such - allowing criminal cases, or cases that imply crime, to run in a civil court without first running it through the criminal court means that you can be found guilty of (or at least economically responsible for, which for all intents and purposes is the same thing) a crime based on very weak proofs.
In other words, it is fully possible to bully people into admitting a crime they haven't committed. In my view, what the RIAA does is quite clearly criminal, at least in spirit, if not in letter - they know perfectly well that their demands have no merit. If criminal law doesn't already cover this, then it should be changed. It sholdn't be possible for this to happen in a civilized society that claims we all are born equal under the law.
Read "Counterexamples in Topology" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexamples_in_Topology). Critical thinking is when you are willing to always question the intuitively obvious, and that book gives the intuitively obvious a good kicking. In my view critical thinking is one of the most important skills to learn in science - as well as in democracy and all other aspects of life. People too often concentraate on the "Why" and forget that it is eaqually important to remember the "Why not".
I imagine one good way to challenge students to think critically is to first make them express a fundamental view of theirs, and then give them the task arguing convincingly against it. It is difficult, of course - it takes great courage to be willing to seriously doubt one's convictions.
How can one say that it is "theoretically impossible", when somebody has made a practical counterexample? It just means that the theory wasn't good enough - or more likely, that the wrong conclusions were made from the theory.
As long as we stick to the antiquated "one man, one vote" system we will only every have a two party system The problem is not "one man, one vote", but the fact that each eletorate goes to one party only; so you can have a situation where party A wins more than half the eletorates by a very small margin, while it loses less than half of the electorates by a huge margin, which means that party A wins the lection, but actually represents a minority of the voters. The reasons for having this system are no doubt historical - in earlier times, when communication was more difficult, it would not have been as easy to have direct, proportional representation; it might feel more natural or safe to people in a constituency to elect a local representative, whom they would send to the electoral college to cast the final vote for them.
There is no real need to do it this way any more - it is just because it is traditional, and of course, this system is much more easily manipulated by the big parties.
To be fair, being only a spokesman he probably doesn't really know anyway. But of course China has the capability.
This is simply part of the diplomatic game - you can't expect a government official to admit that his government does things that are less than absolutely angelic in its very nature. Would the US government admit to hiring assassins or having a policy of abducting people and taking them abroad to be tortured? Of course not. So let's put these sanctimonious outbursts to one side, everybody.
The real reason why this incident, if it actually happened, is not likely to have been perpetrated by Chinese government operators is that they would probably not be as clumsy as that. There is no need to hack you way through anything, for one thing - all you need is to have somebody, say a cleaner, go in and copy the stuff on to a USB stick. Like Terry Pratchett notes in his books - who cares about a lowly sweeper? This kind of thing is more likely to have been done by an amateur.
Two House members said Wednesday their Capitol Hill computers, containing information about political dissidents from around the world, have been hacked by sources apparently working out of China We are talking about two politicians here? A breed of people that, according to the consensus on/. are as competent, trustworthy and generally agreeable as the common US lawyer? That kind of people are a reliable source of information about where a hacking attempt has originated from? So how did they find out where it came from - did they follow the actual "tube" and ended up in a suburb to Shanghai or something like that?
Even I with my limited knowledge about how one can hide one's tracks on the internet, even I know that it is exceedingly easy. I'm sure if the Chinese government has a number of cyber-operatives hacking into American servers, they will be a bit more knowledgeable about these things than I am. In fact, wouldn't the most reasonable approach be to not do it from somewhere in China? Or even better, not be so clumsy that you leave dirty fingerprints all over a second-rate politician's Windows machine.
A much more likely scenario, if you ask me, is that this is either a simple, barefaced lie, or it is somebody who has spoofed his address to somewhere in China, which is not at all hard: Just hack into a machine in China, then go from there.
Guns/weapons do not make violence. And speeding doesn't cause accidents. And so on, ad nauseam. Repeating this pseudo-fact does not make it more true. Yes, a gun lying in a drawer doesn't kill anybody, and a fast vehicle doesn't necessarily cause accidents. It depends on whether the driver is competent, of course - the problem being that an awful lot of driver are not nearly as good as they think, and that combination does accident. And of course, "it's not guns, but people that kill"; but apparently in the US there is an exceptionally high percentage of people who are willing to kill, and that fact makes it a very bad idea that weapons are so easily accessible. A million violent people with guns can, after all, do a lot more damage than a a million violent people with no guns, because a gun is a very powerful killing device.
Stopping the violence in American society takes more than banning guns, and perhaps banning guns isn't even the most important part. I think it probably a necessary part, though. As it is, a lot of violent people have guns, so ordinary citizens feel they have to follow suit; but when everybody is up in arms like that, it is very difficult to effect the change of culture that is necessary in order to make violence less likely to be the "solution" to a problem.
And Hate speech, according to whom? Should we not allow vitriol that some people spout be public, for surely intelligent people would realize it for what it is? An idiot who spouts bile in public is harmless only as long as he is generally recognised as an idiot. Unfortunately they are not all immediately recognisable as idiots - some are able to gain wide, public support. The US, despite the KKK, have never been through a period with a Hitler or Mussolini, both of whom managed to whip a huge following, and maybe that is why Europeans are more wary of hate speech. Yes, intelligent people recognise it for what it is; unfortunately, experience shows us many aren't intelligent enough, and that "intellectuals are suspicious". The intellectuals in Germany in the thirties saw Hitler for what he was, but that wasn't enough to stop him.
It is not at all difficult to define "Hate Speech": Incitement to hatred or violence against a group of people, is the simple answer. The silly KKK demonstrations and people talking about certain races or ethnic groups being inferior - that is not hate speech, it is just wrong. But if you say "The muslems are out to get us, and we have to strike first" - or "The Jewish conspiracy is what causes all our problems, and we have to take action against them"; that is hate speech because it incites to violence against certain groups.
Re:Does XEN have a future?
on
Running Xen
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Haven't the kernel developers basically given xen the cold shoulder,...? They may have, but I think Xen still has a future - just take a look at Oracle VM. Oracle is a substantial player in the marketplace, whatever else one may think of them, so Xen does have some serious backing. Oracle VM is, as far as I can see, little more than a basic Linux with Xen - "perfect for running Oracle Unbreakable Linux":-) I've tried it, though, and it works well.
As always the truth of the matter is somewhere in between.
No I haven't read the article, nor the interview, so what do I know about anything? Well, we've been over this theme before, and as always what is being made the main point of the story is the conflict, not what this or that guy has actually said; so I choose to skip all that and go straight to the point: people's anxiety concerning games, music and youth culture in general.
It is not true of course, that violent games or rap music create violence where none existed before. Kids are not robots that automatically turn into drug crazed killing machines as soon as they see or hear about violence. Those things have always been the subject of art and at one point it was actively promoted by the Christian church under the name of the Crusades.
On the other hand, neither is it true that violent video games and music praising violence has no effect. Young people are in a vulnerable phase, they are in the middle of trying to find their own direction in life, and it is quite easy to be led astray, if you are not well rooted in society. When I think back to that time, I can remember vandalising things for fun, trying out drugs and doing other stupid things. Who knows, if the time had not been so much about anti-violence and anti-war, perhaps I would have gone out and committed my own violent acts; God knows I had enough anger inside.
And that is what this is all about: violent games and other things that praise violence can tell you that it may be an acceptable way to vent your frustration, if you don't have friends or family that can give you some ballast. I am not saying that we should ban violent games or rap music - that would be silly. But we can't all sit around saying "It's not my fault, it's not my fault" - we can only solve the problems with violence if we cooperate about it and take responsibility for solving it.
Man, you are way out of the world rational thought. You propose that 1) Israel should go on indefinitely with their illegal settlements and all the other things that they know are alienating everybody around, and 2) the US should go on indefinitely to support an ever less attractive proposition like that? With that kind of attitudes obviously the only way to end the conflict is an all out war of extermination - now where did the Israelis learn that sort of attitude?
So, what do you recommend? Extermination or compromise? My private guess is that the majority of Israelis would choose compromise - they aren't all ultra-orthodox jews who want to re-establish Solomon's Israel, and they don't all see Palestinians as a lower race. And the same goes for the other side in the conflict - the only thing that keeps the conflict going is the hysterical screamers, like you, who keep whipping up the problems, preferably from a safe distance.
Can you tell us all, why is it that you do this? Do you have a need to feed on other people's misfortune?
We've gone quite off topic, haven't we? The very first post in this thread was asking, rather flippantly, about whether climate change now is good or bad news (I don't really think he was trolling, BTW). And now we are into trolling about how Israel is the innocent victim of the insane hatred of those crazy Muslims - which, strangely has been modded "insightful". That is something of a quantum leap, even for/.
But since it has now been brought up - what does anybody really think they will achieve with this hysterical posturing? World peace? That Israelis and Palistinians will be brothers forever? No conflict can be resolved unless all parties want peace enough to put aside their grievances and reach a compromise. This is true whether we are talking about toddlers throwing toys at each other and bawlling their heads off, or whether we talk about superpowers on the brink of war. Compromise is the only way - and as with all compromise, it will cost both sides more than they like.
I would have thought that Israel has the stronger reason for wanting to make peace with their neighbors. They can only maintain their present position because the US supports them, and that may eventually come to and end; it depends on America being the strongest superpower in the world, with huge resources at their command - resources that are running out. If the crisis really bites, and it comes to a choice between taking care of American citizens and upholding Israel, will the US still support them so unflinchingly? And if the US falters, as well they could, Israel will find itself in a precarious situation. If I had been in their shoes, I would have made an effort to make frineds with my neighbors.
Bullying can cause lifelong damage to a person. I know this from personal experience; I'll skip the touchy-feely stuff, but being the target of persistent bullying breaks your self-confidence on so many levels, and you end up being socially isolated simply to survive mentally. Even now, 40 years later, I still find it very difficult to trust other people - it can be a struggle not feeling bitter, and my immediate reaction when I see teenagers is anger, something I have to consciously lift myself out of. You can laugh it off, of course, but a person my age should not feel like this towards the younger generation, I should be teaching young people some of the things I have picked up during my life.
But bad as bullying is, cyberbullying is several degrees worse. At least when you are being bullied by a group of people in school or at work, you have a physical enemy that you can in principle confront; and what they can do to you is limited by many factors. The cyberbully on the other hand, has access to much greater resources and does not have to witness your pain first-hand - so there is less to hold them back. And there is less to confront - as an inexperienced teenager you don't really know enough to handle this situation, and you can't even turn to your parents, because more likely than not, they don't know as much about computers as you do.
Of course passing a law doesn't solve the problem, but it is a necessary first step. The bullies are not going to stop on their own, and they will probably not understand an appeal their better self; so punishment is required. But we can't punish if there isn't a law that makes it a crime.
Haven't they ever heard of redundant systems? I would have thought that having more than one controller on vital equipment was obvious. Of course, there is another kind of redundancy that might become relevant for the responsible engineer; although I am not sure I think the guy should be fired - knowing how finances trump security, safety and common sense in most companies, he probably wasn't given the resources necessary.
It always amazes me to see how people on/. believe that putting on an posture of radical "capitalism" is cool or deep. Don't they realize that economy is in many ways an artifact - a luxury built on top of our success as a species? Humans are flock animals; each individual is not strongly equipped for survival, it is our ability to work together in groups and pass on knowledge that more than anything made us successful as a species. But living in a society means that there are limits to our freedom, whatever the different constitutions have to say on the matter - hence we have laws that forbid us do certain things. The completely free market is a fiction, simply.
But more important than that is the fact that all resources are limited, and certain resources are very limited. Elephants are one such resource - there may seem to be an awful lot of them, but we can see them wiped out in an instant if we don't protect them. Perhaps you think that wouldn't matter - they are just animals; but research has shown that even elephants are a necessary part of the eco-system. In fact, the more we learn about nature, the more obvious it becomes that we can't remove any single part of nature without negatively impacting the whole system. Which is why it is so profoundly stupid to think that radical, unrestrained capitalism can ever be anything but fundamentally damaging and eventually catastrophic.
So, to get back to the subject at hand, it is right and good that eBay bans ivory trade; not just because of international or even national laws, not only because it would be sad to see elephants wiped out to satisfy the superficial whims of vain idiots, but because, fundamentally, capitalism must be restrained. Reciting brainless mantras about the freedom of the market is not going to help us through the crisis we're entering into; we are running out of the cheap resources that are the foundation for our opulent lifestyles, and sooner or later we will have to return to the one thing that made us successful: our ability to cooperate. The only question is: how bad will we allow it to become before we learn?
Slashdot Mirror
We all know what problems there are with nuclear power; or we know some of it at least. What I don't like about it is that it isn't a long term solution; it is just an "easy" temporary fix, and as all temporary fixes it will be regarded as more or less permanent once it is up and running, stifling any motivation for getting down in the dirt to find the right solution. What makes it doubly pointless is that we already have better solutions within our grasp - at least two different ways of exploiting solar energy directly, several ways of exploiting water power, wind power. The only real problem is lack of political guts and stamina.
That is the problem with being as old as McBush - young people have visions and ideas for the future because they have one. And before you get started about age-ism - I'm old myself, I bloody know what I'm talking about, at least in this respect. Believe me, when you know that you probably don't have many decades left, you stop planning so far ahead, because what's the point?
The short version: Intellectuals are all subversives.
The longer version is that the most intelligent people are often not good at automatically following orders. They tend to reflect on what is said and question authority - when you have gone through university and possibly got a PhD, I think you can be excused for feeling that you are the best authority around at any time. This is not quite what the army is after, is my impression; they want people that can whip of a "Sir! Yes Sir!" so it feels like a slap in the face.
And the military doesn't have a reputation for intellectual brilliance - it is more a case of "if you can't be anything else, be a soldier".
All in all I think well-educated don't want the army, and the army don't want intellectuals either. Not an easy one to solve.
And isn't it true that we as hackers enjoy the dirty work of programming? Using a program you made yourself is so much nicer than using somebody else's.
I haven't been able to connect to the site for some reason... Still, when has evidence ever been required for when I voice my infallible opinion?
There is a reason why it is called 'pimping': it means that it is full of tasteless glitter with little to no functional benefit, which will in a few years look distinctly goofy. Just take a look at any episode of the first series of Star Trek - no doubt it was thought of as very impressive when it was filmed, but now it looks like what some pre-teen has banged up with his Lego set.
It seems profoundly dishonest, the way this article tries wring out an issue about "free speech" of this case. We all know that free speech isn't an unlimited right anywhere in the world, and that this is the way it should be. Any freedom will always be limited by the laws that protect all the other rights of people in society; it is a manifestation of serious immaturity and lack of insight to rail against the rule of law, when it is actually the rule of law that gives you the right to freedom that you have.
But back to the case - slandering people is not protected by freedom of speech, nor is it the right way to proceed. If you as a citizen have evidence about questionable activities, you have several legal avenues - if you know of a crime it is your duty to inform the police, so they can pursue the criminals. The only reason for slandering another person or company on a web-site is that one's evidence wasn't good enough to convince either the police, the court or any news-media; and in that case, perhaps you are simply wrong?
This is probably going to be simply ignored, as it is just one of my pet peeves; but as it is one of my pet peeves, I will proceed none the less. Consequently, this is my Message To The World:
What's the bloody sense in making a thing like this - let alone owning one? It is not exactly demanding, making you own coffee: put ground coffee beans in your favourite cafetiere/filter/mysterious glass thing with a spirit burner, add water, possibly hot. Wait for the magic to unfold right before your very eyes. Pour and drink. If you want to go all out, you grind your own coffee beans.
Recently I've seen more and more of these pointless gadgets where you insert a little foil capsule into a complicated piece of equipment and out comes a mediocre cup of coffee that has cost probably 10 times as much as a good cup of hand-made coffee; and you will have left a huge, reeking carbon footprint in the process. Plus, after a while you will have convinced yourself that you could never go back to doing it the old way - in other words, you have become dependent on a silly gadget, a little bit more helpless.
I suppose that is exactly where the industry wants us: unable to cook our own food, so we have to rely on ready made crap, unable to perform even the simplest of everyday tasks, because we rely on household machinery. Why do people fall for it? We honestly don't need most of these things unless we suffer from a physical disability; and they don't actually save us any meaningful time - by which I mean time we then spend on doing things that are worth doing rather than sit down to watch tv or play computer games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stonehenge_back_wide.jpg
Keep it simple: When people receive SPAM, they get pissed off. You don't want to piss off your customers.
In other words, it is fully possible to bully people into admitting a crime they haven't committed. In my view, what the RIAA does is quite clearly criminal, at least in spirit, if not in letter - they know perfectly well that their demands have no merit. If criminal law doesn't already cover this, then it should be changed. It sholdn't be possible for this to happen in a civilized society that claims we all are born equal under the law.
Read "Counterexamples in Topology" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexamples_in_Topology). Critical thinking is when you are willing to always question the intuitively obvious, and that book gives the intuitively obvious a good kicking. In my view critical thinking is one of the most important skills to learn in science - as well as in democracy and all other aspects of life. People too often concentraate on the "Why" and forget that it is eaqually important to remember the "Why not".
I imagine one good way to challenge students to think critically is to first make them express a fundamental view of theirs, and then give them the task arguing convincingly against it. It is difficult, of course - it takes great courage to be willing to seriously doubt one's convictions.
How can one say that it is "theoretically impossible", when somebody has made a practical counterexample? It just means that the theory wasn't good enough - or more likely, that the wrong conclusions were made from the theory.
There is no real need to do it this way any more - it is just because it is traditional, and of course, this system is much more easily manipulated by the big parties.
To be fair, being only a spokesman he probably doesn't really know anyway. But of course China has the capability.
This is simply part of the diplomatic game - you can't expect a government official to admit that his government does things that are less than absolutely angelic in its very nature. Would the US government admit to hiring assassins or having a policy of abducting people and taking them abroad to be tortured? Of course not. So let's put these sanctimonious outbursts to one side, everybody.
The real reason why this incident, if it actually happened, is not likely to have been perpetrated by Chinese government operators is that they would probably not be as clumsy as that. There is no need to hack you way through anything, for one thing - all you need is to have somebody, say a cleaner, go in and copy the stuff on to a USB stick. Like Terry Pratchett notes in his books - who cares about a lowly sweeper? This kind of thing is more likely to have been done by an amateur.
Even I with my limited knowledge about how one can hide one's tracks on the internet, even I know that it is exceedingly easy. I'm sure if the Chinese government has a number of cyber-operatives hacking into American servers, they will be a bit more knowledgeable about these things than I am. In fact, wouldn't the most reasonable approach be to not do it from somewhere in China? Or even better, not be so clumsy that you leave dirty fingerprints all over a second-rate politician's Windows machine.
A much more likely scenario, if you ask me, is that this is either a simple, barefaced lie, or it is somebody who has spoofed his address to somewhere in China, which is not at all hard: Just hack into a machine in China, then go from there.
Stopping the violence in American society takes more than banning guns, and perhaps banning guns isn't even the most important part. I think it probably a necessary part, though. As it is, a lot of violent people have guns, so ordinary citizens feel they have to follow suit; but when everybody is up in arms like that, it is very difficult to effect the change of culture that is necessary in order to make violence less likely to be the "solution" to a problem. And Hate speech, according to whom? Should we not allow vitriol that some people spout be public, for surely intelligent people would realize it for what it is? An idiot who spouts bile in public is harmless only as long as he is generally recognised as an idiot. Unfortunately they are not all immediately recognisable as idiots - some are able to gain wide, public support. The US, despite the KKK, have never been through a period with a Hitler or Mussolini, both of whom managed to whip a huge following, and maybe that is why Europeans are more wary of hate speech. Yes, intelligent people recognise it for what it is; unfortunately, experience shows us many aren't intelligent enough, and that "intellectuals are suspicious". The intellectuals in Germany in the thirties saw Hitler for what he was, but that wasn't enough to stop him.
It is not at all difficult to define "Hate Speech": Incitement to hatred or violence against a group of people, is the simple answer. The silly KKK demonstrations and people talking about certain races or ethnic groups being inferior - that is not hate speech, it is just wrong. But if you say "The muslems are out to get us, and we have to strike first" - or "The Jewish conspiracy is what causes all our problems, and we have to take action against them"; that is hate speech because it incites to violence against certain groups.
As always the truth of the matter is somewhere in between.
No I haven't read the article, nor the interview, so what do I know about anything? Well, we've been over this theme before, and as always what is being made the main point of the story is the conflict, not what this or that guy has actually said; so I choose to skip all that and go straight to the point: people's anxiety concerning games, music and youth culture in general.
It is not true of course, that violent games or rap music create violence where none existed before. Kids are not robots that automatically turn into drug crazed killing machines as soon as they see or hear about violence. Those things have always been the subject of art and at one point it was actively promoted by the Christian church under the name of the Crusades.
On the other hand, neither is it true that violent video games and music praising violence has no effect. Young people are in a vulnerable phase, they are in the middle of trying to find their own direction in life, and it is quite easy to be led astray, if you are not well rooted in society. When I think back to that time, I can remember vandalising things for fun, trying out drugs and doing other stupid things. Who knows, if the time had not been so much about anti-violence and anti-war, perhaps I would have gone out and committed my own violent acts; God knows I had enough anger inside.
And that is what this is all about: violent games and other things that praise violence can tell you that it may be an acceptable way to vent your frustration, if you don't have friends or family that can give you some ballast. I am not saying that we should ban violent games or rap music - that would be silly. But we can't all sit around saying "It's not my fault, it's not my fault" - we can only solve the problems with violence if we cooperate about it and take responsibility for solving it.
Man, you are way out of the world rational thought. You propose that 1) Israel should go on indefinitely with their illegal settlements and all the other things that they know are alienating everybody around, and 2) the US should go on indefinitely to support an ever less attractive proposition like that? With that kind of attitudes obviously the only way to end the conflict is an all out war of extermination - now where did the Israelis learn that sort of attitude?
So, what do you recommend? Extermination or compromise? My private guess is that the majority of Israelis would choose compromise - they aren't all ultra-orthodox jews who want to re-establish Solomon's Israel, and they don't all see Palestinians as a lower race. And the same goes for the other side in the conflict - the only thing that keeps the conflict going is the hysterical screamers, like you, who keep whipping up the problems, preferably from a safe distance.
Can you tell us all, why is it that you do this? Do you have a need to feed on other people's misfortune?
We've gone quite off topic, haven't we? The very first post in this thread was asking, rather flippantly, about whether climate change now is good or bad news (I don't really think he was trolling, BTW). And now we are into trolling about how Israel is the innocent victim of the insane hatred of those crazy Muslims - which, strangely has been modded "insightful". That is something of a quantum leap, even for /.
But since it has now been brought up - what does anybody really think they will achieve with this hysterical posturing? World peace? That Israelis and Palistinians will be brothers forever? No conflict can be resolved unless all parties want peace enough to put aside their grievances and reach a compromise. This is true whether we are talking about toddlers throwing toys at each other and bawlling their heads off, or whether we talk about superpowers on the brink of war. Compromise is the only way - and as with all compromise, it will cost both sides more than they like.
I would have thought that Israel has the stronger reason for wanting to make peace with their neighbors. They can only maintain their present position because the US supports them, and that may eventually come to and end; it depends on America being the strongest superpower in the world, with huge resources at their command - resources that are running out. If the crisis really bites, and it comes to a choice between taking care of American citizens and upholding Israel, will the US still support them so unflinchingly? And if the US falters, as well they could, Israel will find itself in a precarious situation. If I had been in their shoes, I would have made an effort to make frineds with my neighbors.
Bullying can cause lifelong damage to a person. I know this from personal experience; I'll skip the touchy-feely stuff, but being the target of persistent bullying breaks your self-confidence on so many levels, and you end up being socially isolated simply to survive mentally. Even now, 40 years later, I still find it very difficult to trust other people - it can be a struggle not feeling bitter, and my immediate reaction when I see teenagers is anger, something I have to consciously lift myself out of. You can laugh it off, of course, but a person my age should not feel like this towards the younger generation, I should be teaching young people some of the things I have picked up during my life.
But bad as bullying is, cyberbullying is several degrees worse. At least when you are being bullied by a group of people in school or at work, you have a physical enemy that you can in principle confront; and what they can do to you is limited by many factors. The cyberbully on the other hand, has access to much greater resources and does not have to witness your pain first-hand - so there is less to hold them back. And there is less to confront - as an inexperienced teenager you don't really know enough to handle this situation, and you can't even turn to your parents, because more likely than not, they don't know as much about computers as you do.
Of course passing a law doesn't solve the problem, but it is a necessary first step. The bullies are not going to stop on their own, and they will probably not understand an appeal their better self; so punishment is required. But we can't punish if there isn't a law that makes it a crime.
Haven't they ever heard of redundant systems? I would have thought that having more than one controller on vital equipment was obvious. Of course, there is another kind of redundancy that might become relevant for the responsible engineer; although I am not sure I think the guy should be fired - knowing how finances trump security, safety and common sense in most companies, he probably wasn't given the resources necessary.
It always amazes me to see how people on /. believe that putting on an posture of radical "capitalism" is cool or deep. Don't they realize that economy is in many ways an artifact - a luxury built on top of our success as a species? Humans are flock animals; each individual is not strongly equipped for survival, it is our ability to work together in groups and pass on knowledge that more than anything made us successful as a species. But living in a society means that there are limits to our freedom, whatever the different constitutions have to say on the matter - hence we have laws that forbid us do certain things. The completely free market is a fiction, simply.
But more important than that is the fact that all resources are limited, and certain resources are very limited. Elephants are one such resource - there may seem to be an awful lot of them, but we can see them wiped out in an instant if we don't protect them. Perhaps you think that wouldn't matter - they are just animals; but research has shown that even elephants are a necessary part of the eco-system. In fact, the more we learn about nature, the more obvious it becomes that we can't remove any single part of nature without negatively impacting the whole system. Which is why it is so profoundly stupid to think that radical, unrestrained capitalism can ever be anything but fundamentally damaging and eventually catastrophic.
So, to get back to the subject at hand, it is right and good that eBay bans ivory trade; not just because of international or even national laws, not only because it would be sad to see elephants wiped out to satisfy the superficial whims of vain idiots, but because, fundamentally, capitalism must be restrained. Reciting brainless mantras about the freedom of the market is not going to help us through the crisis we're entering into; we are running out of the cheap resources that are the foundation for our opulent lifestyles, and sooner or later we will have to return to the one thing that made us successful: our ability to cooperate. The only question is: how bad will we allow it to become before we learn?